Asha Javeed

First Cit­i­zens chief ex­ec­u­tive Lar­ry Howai is tipped to be the next Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank when Ewart Williams' term ex­pires in May 2012. While there's no term lim­it on the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, the T&T Guardian learned from se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, that Howai is the top choice to fill the po­si­tion when Williams' term ends. The Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor is ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Cab­i­net. Howai, who has about 30 years in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try, is al­so chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and al­so chairs the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC). He was in­clud­ed in Prime Min­is­ter's Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's del­e­ga­tion at the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Brazil last April.

When con­tact­ed, Howai told the T&T Guardian while peo­ple some­times joke about it, he knows "ab­solute­ly noth­ing about it." Williams is on his sec­ond five-year term, hav­ing been ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion in 2002. Thus far, he is the sec­ond longest serv­ing Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor af­ter Vic­tor Bruce who served in that po­si­tion from 1969 to 1984. Williams spent 30 years at the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund. He steered the coun­try from dou­ble dig­it in­fla­tion to sin­gle dig­it in­fla­tion, had warned the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of over­heat­ing with the econ­o­my with mas­sive in­fra­struc­ture projects and has called on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to let its fis­cal pol­i­cy guide T&T on the path to eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

He played a key role in the bailout of Lawrence Duprey's in­sol­vent in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Cli­co, in Jan­u­ary 2009. Un­der his watch, the bank ini­ti­at­ed civ­il ac­tion against Duprey and for­mer fi­nan­cial head An­dre Mon­teil this year. Williams bore the brunt of crit­i­cism for the bank's fail­ure to prop­er­ly reg­u­late Cli­co, de­spite the fact that Cli­co on­ly fell un­der the Cen­tral Bank's um­brel­la in 2004 and ar­cha­ic 1966 leg­is­la­tion ex­ist­ed to gov­ern the in­sur­ance sec­tor. Ques­tioned by the T&T Guardian last week at the bank's Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port me­dia fo­rum on the pol­i­cy po­si­tions tak­en by both ad­min­is­tra­tions with re­gard to the Cli­co bailout for EF­PA pol­i­cy­hold­ers, Williams replied that it was not a fair ques­tion to ask.

He had replied: "In March 2010, there was a dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tion whose ap­proach to Cli­co was dif­fer­ent. "This new Gov­ern­ment has made it clear, in a trans­par­ent way, their pro­pos­al. The Cen­tral Bank, like a good pub­lic ser­vant, im­ple­ments their strat­e­gy. "I can't com­pare. The new strat­e­gy pro­vides for a larg­er pay­out that en­vis­aged in the 2010-2011 bud­get." The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the five-year term lim­it for a Gov­er­nor is de­signed to span the elec­toral cy­cle to main­tain the Bank's in­de­pen­dent po­si­tion on is­sues. The Cen­tral Bank acts as banker and ad­vis­er to the Gov­ern­ment and as banker to com­mer­cial banks.